The UN and Global Political Economy Trade, Finance, and Development [Paperback]

Against the backdrop of a 20-year revolt against free trade orthodoxy by economists inside the UN and their impact on policy discussions since the 1960s, the authors show how the UN both nurtured and inhibited creative and novel intellectual contributions to the trade and development debate. Presenting a stirring account of the main UN actors in this debate, The UN and Global Political Economy focuses on the accomplishments and struggles of UN economists and the role played by such UN agencies as the Department of Economic (and Social) Affairs, the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development, and the Economic Commission for Latin America (and the Caribbean). It also looks closely at the effects of the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, the growing strength of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the 1990s, and the lessons to be drawn from these and other recent developments.

Foreword by Louis Emmerij, Richard Jolly, and Thomas G. Weiss
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The UN Trade and Development Debates of the 1940s
2. The UN Recruits Economists
3. Michal Kalecki, the World Economic Report, and McCarthyism
4. From Full Employment to Economic Development
5. The Early Terms-of-Trade Controversy
6. ECLA, Industrialization, and Inflation
7. Competitive Coexistence and the Politics of Modernization
8. The Birth of UNCTAD
9. UNCTAD under Ra?l Prebisch: Success or Failure?
10. World Monetary Problems and the Challenge of Commodities
11. The Conservative Counterrevolution of the 1980s
12. What Lessons for the Future?
Appendix: List of Archival Sources
Notes
Index
About the Authors
About the UN Intellectual History Project